A Voice for the Voiceless

By David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

RANGOON, Union of Myanmar – The anticipated release of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, scheduled for November 13, has placed the Burmese government under International pressure.  Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won in a landslide election success in Myanmar in 1990, but the military junta overruled the results.  

Suu Kyi, has become the icon of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement and remains the military government’s most well-known opposition.  Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Critics say the coming elections aim to create a disguise of democracy. The regime recently passed a law that made her ineligible to stand in the November 7 election because of her court conviction, due to a bizarre incident in which an American swam to her lakeside home.

The November poll is part of the junta’s long-announced “roadmap to democracy”, but critics have dismissed it as a sham designed to keep the military in power.

The country needs to show the world that its November elections are credible by releasing Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week.

“The regime has repeatedly claimed it intended to release her on various dates over the years and has then failed to follow through on its commitment to release her.  So, ultimately, I don’t tend to follow what they say, but rather what they do,” said attorney Jared Genser, who is based in Washington.

Mr. Ban said after Monday’s meeting, that the ministers had reiterated the need for the election process to be “more inclusive, participatory and transparent”.

Nyan Win, the foreign minister, rejected international condemnation on Tuesday, insisting that the junta is committed to a “free and fair” vote.

But, uncertainty continues to mount over whether the military regime will actually release the 65-year-old human rights and democratic activist, known reverently among Myanmar’s people as “The Lady”, will remain until the moment she appears in public.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) was forcibly disbanded in May, under the new and prohibitive election laws.

Government hurdles to opposition candidates include a fee of $500 per candidate, the equivalent of several months’ pay, for the majority of the Burmese people.

The National Democratic Force (NDF), a breakaway opposition party, is among those planning to contest the vote, a decision that put it at odds with Suu Kyi.

A Myanmar analyst based in Thailand said any release would come with conditions and that Suu Kyi “won’t be free to go out”.  “It’s a military dictatorship. No matter what the legal background of the issue, if they don’t want to release her, she won’t be released,” Aung Naing Oo said.

Along with promises to release Suu Kyi, the government, this week, moved to quash what it views as attempts to undermine the vote.

For more information, please see:

CNN World – Lawyers skeptical about Myanmar releasing Suu Kyi – 1 October 2010

Al Jazerra English – Suu Kyi to be ‘freed’ after polls – 1 October 2010

BBC – UN chief call for ‘inclusive’ Burma election – 27 September 2010

Nameless North Korean refugees (Photo Courtesy of Chosun Newspaper)

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch, Asia

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean refugees who escaped the country’s authoritarian regime have many untold stories.

Sometime in July, Choi Young-hee, a woman in her 70s, offered smugglers some cash to carry her across the heavily guarded Tuman river that separates North Korea from China.

Soon, her daughter also tried to cross, but was caught and is now in a North Korean political prison, where she can potentially face hard labor, torture, or even death.

North Korea is known as one of the worst violators of human rights in the world. Seeking a better life and liberty, countless individuals attempt to flee the nation that is currently under the leadership of one of the most notorious dictators, Kim Jong-il.

Any North Korean defector who is caught face extraordinary hardships. If they are women, the story can be even worse.

Many surveys and newspaper accounts show that 90 percent of those who are able to evade Chinese border guards and police are sold and trafficked. If the refugees are captured by Chinese authorities, they are forcibly repatriated to North Korea in violation of international law, where they will be locked up in a political concentration camp for imprisonment, beatings, torture, and sometimes a public execution.

The primary motivation of the defectors arises from hunger. Congressman Chris Smith (R-New Jersey) said at the hearing held by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on September 23 that this summer’s food shortages in North Korea were reportedly as bad as in the 1990s, when estimated up to 2 million people starved to death.

“I thought that once I went to China my children would not starve to death, and that is why I crossed the Tumen River, but once we arrived on the other side, what awaited us were fear of capture by Chinese security officials and forced repatriation back to North Korea,” said Ms. Mi Sun Bahng, one of North Korean refugees who eventually made it to the West and freedom.

In describing her encounter with Chinese brokers when she first crossed the river, she said, “I was separated from my children and sold for 4,000 yuan, [approximately, US$594]. What was most infuriating was that these Chinese [traffickers] called [us] North Korean defector-women ‘pigs,’ and treated us like animals.”

In a period of a few months, Ms. Bahng was “sold three times like livestock.” She managed to escape but in the course of looking for her children, she was captured by Chinese authorities and was repatriated to North Korea.

She witnessed horrors in prison. Ms. Bahng saw her inmates, who were dying of hunger, trying to catch insects, among many other things, to eat for survival.

“To this day I have unending nightmares of the people I saw there, those who would be working out in the fields and if they saw a snake or a frog would catch them and swallow them whole; there were people who would be defecating and if a piece of radish came out they would immediately wipe it on their sleeves and eat it; if there were pieces of beans or kernels of corn found in cow manure, the person who found them would consider that day to be their lucky day.”

Currently, China does not recognize the North Korean defectors as refugees and it also won’t allow the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) access to them.

For more information, please see:

The Epoch Times – North Korean Defectors Give Grim Testimony of Experiences with China – 29 September 2010

AFP – US lawmaker presses China, India over human trafficking – 30 September 2010

The Washington Times – Repatriation policy links China to rights violations – 23 September 2010